Welcome to a very subjective list of resources for Chinese art history as well as Chinese and Chinese-American contemporary art. This guide will accompany you as or after you read S. J. Rozan’s newest addition to her Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, GHOST HERO, set in the contemporary art scene of New York City.

If you have only a slight acquaintance with Chinese art, as I did before I began this project, you might think of Ming vases, carved jade objects, paintings from nature with added calligraphy and those pottery figures standing guard in excavated trenches. But with several thousand years of history, Chinese art is so much more, of course; complicated, fascinating, enlightening, beautiful and political.

I hope this guide will serve as an introduction that will lead you to visit museums, galleries and read more on the vast history of Chinese art. Thank you, and thanks to S.J. for allowing me to be among the first to read GHOST HERO and be inspired by her writing. – Hannah Swale